


every town has a corner

by transtlanticism



Category: Project Nemesis Series - Brendan Reichs
Genre: F/M, canon compliant I guess, i mean we all know tack was always in love with min, tack's perspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-23 18:27:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14338443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transtlanticism/pseuds/transtlanticism
Summary: Four times Tack didn't realize he was in love with Min and one time he did.





	every town has a corner

**Author's Note:**

> title from wait by death cab for cutie

There’s gravel on my knees.

I’m eight years old, it’s recess, and my elbow is cut because I scraped it on the trunk of a tree outside our elementary school. My best friend, who was trying to climb it with me, twisted her ankle, and she leans on my shoulder all the way across the playground. 

Her name is Melinda, but everyone calls her Min, and she has long black hair that she always has in two braids. It’s curly at the ends. She lives a few trailers down from mine, and she’s always in my class because our last names are both in the second half of the alphabet. 

We both get picked on a lot by the kids who band together in groups, but neither of us care. Min and I always eat lunch together. We have a table near the back of the lunchroom and no one bothers us there. 

Min picks up a rock and hands it to me. “This is pretty sharp,” she says. “We should write something in the dirt. Or that tree, over there.”

We carve our initials into the beech tree on the other side of the playground. 

TR, I write. MW, she writes. 

I add a plus sign when she’s not looking.

…

We’re ten now. I turned ten a few months ago, but it’s September 19th. Min’s birthday was on Saturday but she won’t talk about it.

“Did something happen?” I ask. 

“No,” she says stubbornly, turning her face towards the window. We’re on the bus, and it’s full of the usual morning chatter.

“Yes it did. I can tell.”

“Thomas,” she says sharply. 

“You could just tell me and I’ll leave you alone.” 

“You wouldn’t believe me.” Her voice radiates anger, and I look at her. “No one did.”

“I would,” I persist.

She shakes her head. “Forget it. I’m not telling anyone ever again.”

“Min,” I whine, but she looks even more pissed off.

“I will punch you.”

And she looks like she will, so I drop the subject and forget we ever talked about it.

The bus pulls into school just as the bell rings, and we all file into the office for late passes. 

“Did you do the probability homework?” I ask her.

“Yeah.” She slips it out of her backpack. She’s always been neat, keeping her homework in folders, whereas my backpack is a disaster, papers crumpled in pockets. But Min and I both have an aptitude for math, and we like to look over each other’s homework whenever possible.

“That’s the answer I got, too.”

She smiles slightly. It doesn’t quite reach her eyes, but it’s enough to reassure me that whatever happened to Min, she’s strong enough to move past it.

I knew she would be. 

…

It’s summer. Min’s twelve and I’m thirteen. Our parents let us walk into town by ourselves, and we went down to the lakefront and sat on the benches with ice cream.

She stares up at the sky. “Do you think anything interesting will ever happen to us?”

“What do you mean?” 

I know what she means, though. We both read The Hunger Games recently, and Min’s awe of Katniss is no secret to me. She wants to be a Katniss. She wants her own story, raging against a controlling government regime, and not stuck in sleepy Fire Lake with me as her sidekick.

Idly, I wonder if I would be her Gale or Peeta. 

Worry I’m the former when I’d rather be the latter.

“Nothing interesting happens here,” she says. “It’s the same thing, every time. The only stuff that ever happens to me is…bad.” Her eyes cloud over, and I have no idea what she’s talking about.

“Like…Ethan?” I ask. “Sarah and Jessica picking on you?”

“Sure.” She doesn’t sound sure. But her shoulder brushes mine, and the sun is shining, and we both have chocolate ice cream, and nothing terrible ever happens in Fire Lake anyway.

It’s perfect. 

…

We’re fourteen, and it’s winter, and it’s almost pointless to give a shit about snow when we know it won’t go away for months, but it snows six feet and we get a day off one Wednesday, so Min comes over and we shut the door against the snow.

My dad had to walk into town, so we’ve got at least an hour to ourselves. Min rips off her beanie, and her hair is a wild tangle floating out of her braids.

“I’m tired of my mother,” she spits. She’s angry. “It’s like she never wants me to grow up. Never wants me to be my own person.”

“What does she not want you to do?” I ask.

“I just wanted to cut my hair shorter. She won’t let me. She keeps telling me how pretty it is, and that I’ll regret it.”

“I mean, it’ll grow back. What’s she worried about?”

“She acts like it’ll make life difficult for her. Like it’s her hair.” Min crosses her arms and takes a deep breath. “You know what?”

“What?”

“Screw it.” She lunges past me and grabs a pair of kitchen scissors. Her reflection stares back at her from the sink, warped and glaring.

The scissors close over one of her braids.

“Min!” I hiss.

She ignores me, chopping off the second braid. Tossing them into the garbage. Running her hands through her newly shortened hair.

It’s choppy and uneven, so I grab the scissors out of her hand. “What did you just do?”

“What I wanted to, for once,” she snaps.

“Let me fix it, at least.” I drag a garbage can over to where Min’s standing and carefully trim the ends of her hair. They’re not even, they’re layered and curling, and I make them look as neat as possible before spinning her to face me again.

She doesn’t look like Melinda Juilliard Wilder anymore. She looks like Min. It suits her. I love it.

I love her.

Um. 

Her hair.

Shit.

“Does it look okay?” She's gauging my reaction.

“Looks good,” I say quickly. 

“Really?” She pokes her head into the bathroom. “Oh.” She touches her hair, smiling. “You actually did a really nice job, Tack.”

“Virginia is going to lose her mind.”

“Let her.” She jams the hat back over her head. “Come on. We’re going to scare the living shit out of her.”

Of course I love Min, I reason as we trek through the snow. She’s my best friend. If I didn’t love her, that would be insane.

“Heads up!” 

I duck as a snowball flies over my head.

“Not today,” I call in my best impression of the Geico commercial, and she laughs and topples backwards into the snow.

I know her mother’s going to be angry, but I’ll stick with her through it, like she does for me. Like we've always done for each other.

Platonically. Right?

…

We’re sixteen. It’s the dead of winter, and I’m standing outside Noah Livingston’s house, and my hands are shaking and her arms are around me and she’s alive, she’s alive, she’s alive.

I never thought I’d see her again.

“Get inside, you head case,” I tell her. “Can’t have you dying of pneumonia the second I find you alive.”

Her eyes are shining and her hair is longer than I’ve seen it since we were fourteen, and I think about the kitchen scissors in the trailer in the snow. I think about the ice cream on the park bench by the lake. I think about the math homework in the pink binder and the window on the bus. I think about the rock and the initials in the beech tree.

And I think about all the times I told myself I wasn’t in love with her, when she's the best thing that's ever happened to me.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: @saltyclarke


End file.
